


Last of the Chaos

by Tarasque



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AU, African Great Lakes AU, An OC who's named Lor San Tekka and has a map, BB-8 is Poe's plane, Dr Denis Mukwege, Drug Use, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, La Resistance is a newspaper, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Murder, Overdosing, Pilot Poe, So be warned, Some of the tags don't apply to the main characters, Torture, Which is very real and very bleak, black Phasma, but it's Eastern Congo, ex-child soldier Finn, journalist Leia, journalist Poe, militia captain Phasma, stray Rey, the latter definitely happens to the main characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-28 12:09:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6328567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarasque/pseuds/Tarasque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I was a journalist once” is what blurts out of Poe's mouth, unplanned. “Came in the Great Lakes region to change the world with my writing, all those years ago. Nothing changed. Turned out I was more useful as a pilot.”</p><p>Poe thinks he might be done with journalism and Eastern Congo, until he's not.<br/>But the scoop he's after might cost him his life if a very exceptional Congolese soldier doesn't intervene on time.<br/>And then it's a question of falling in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Poe knows a foul mood won’t help fixing his engine but he can’t help it. Actually, he might be glad there’s an engine to fix, something to give him a good reason for his anger. He finds the fuel leak inside, retrieves the guilty part – a busted hose, with is a good thing since at least it’s not specific to his antiquity of a plane but also a bad thing because he changed the hose only one month before, damn the Kivu weather – and carefully avoids thinking of any of the deeper roots of his mood.

What doesn’t help either is finding Karé’s dark, apologetic face only inches from his own as he gets his head out of the engine – he jumps, hits his head on the propeller and swears profusely.

“ ‘m sorry, Poe,” says Karé, jerking her thumb behind her shoulder towards a group of people at the hangar door. “TV team is here, they say they’ve been waiting for you long enough. Also, it’s going to rain soon and they’re afraid for their material.”

“Shit,” says Poe, who had completely forgotten. Team are already circling the plane like predators ready for the kill. “Why couldn’t they interview you instead? You’re a pilot, same as me, you’re pretty and you’ve been ferrying people for the Panzi hospital, same as me. And you speak a better French.”

Karé smirks and it’s not completely _pretty_. “Yeah, but I’m not white. What I caught them say was ‘needing someone who the audience can relate to’ or some shit like that. So go and act like the handsome Westerner figurehead that you are, huh.”

Poe looks straight at her and knows his eyes are as dead as her own. When he first came here, he’d probably have protested that he’s Latino, not white, but not anymore. What difference does it make for a Congolese woman that he tans better than an Englishman? He’s still American, filthy rich in any local’s opinion, his skin is still light, and he’s here because he damn well _chose_ it. “I’ll give them a figurehead,” he growls. “They can always cut what they don’t like.”

There’s already a woman upon him, clutching a mic, and on her heels a bunch of camera-wielding guys. They're all wearing the same sensible, colourful, _brand new_ field clothes and trainers.

“Monsieur Poe Dameron? Je suis Marie-Claude Brunier,” she says, and that’s going to be a problem because her accent hails from France, or what does he know, maybe from Belgium, but certainly lacks the softness and cadences of the South Kivu version he’s been hearing for he doesn’t want to remember how many years. He won’t understand half of what she’s saying.

He takes her extended hand, then decides against politeness and keeps his mix of American and African accent as thick as he can in his French. “Why didn’t you interview Karé, if you were in such a hurry? She’s been doing this as long as I have.”

“Monsieur Dameron, we’re on the same side,” says the woman, smiling. Not insincerely. “We want to bring international attention on the tragedies of this conflict. But it won’t work if the audience keeps seeing it as some complicated thing between African factions. We need an angle for our story. Human interest, something a bit romantic and thrilling.”

“I’m thrilling, huh?”

“And besides your accent is quite sexy, Poe. They’ll love it.” She’s smiling even more and fuck but is she flirting?

“Nice to know. I’ll ask my boyfriend if he agrees next time,” he says. None of his recent bed-partners have lasted long enough to qualify as boyfriend but she doesn’t need to know.

After that she remains efficiently professional while he does his best to become cordial, talking about his plane and Dr Mukwege and everyone and everything he transports from the forest to Bukavu and back. He even manages to answer a question about his motivations without sounding too bitter.

“Would you let me and Laurent” – Laurent is a cameraman, he understands – “fly with you tomorrow?” she finally asks.

He sighs, looks away from the camera, feeling the anger creep out again. “No,” he says.

“Oh! Why?”

“Listen, Madame Brunier,” he finally manages to say without exploding, gesturing to his white and orange plane. “My plane here is a Broussard. A museum piece, you could say. Probably made in the sixties, this particular one was flown by the Centrafrique Army until the nineties, I think. I love it even though the tailwheel gear is a pain in the ass, and you know why? Because it seats six people, up to eight if they’re light enough, which is two to four more than all the other bush aircrafts they have here, the Cessnas and the old Pipers and the rest.”

He closes his eyes and presses his thumbs against his closed eyelids, hard. He knows he looks exhausted, dishevelled and dirty. Not quite the hero they seem to be looking for. But the camera is still going and maybe that’s what they really need for their film, a dose of the truth.

He goes on. “But even though, not enough. I’ll tell you what happened yesterday. Flew to a small village in the forest to bring them some medical supplies. For the way back, there were two very ill people I had to take back to Bukavu, which was fine since I can convert the back for two stretchers. But then there were also these three women, they had been raped, which you must know by now isn’t a rare occurrence in these parts, huh. Of course they weren’t so well but thing is, they wanted to fight. They knew their aggressors and they’d decided to bring the crime to trial. In Bukavu. Which means a one-week walk through the forest, dangerous, exhausting. They’d have been fools to attempt it. So they asked me to take them. And I couldn’t! I fucking couldn’t, because it’s _either_ two stretchers or four seats. I made them _choose_ the one who would fly with me on the remaining front seat. Fuck it all.”

Nobody talks for a while after that. Finally, he sees Laurent switch off the camera.

“I need all the seats,” he adds. “Really.”

“I’m sorry,” says the reporter, and she really seems to be. A nice woman.

He turns to leave, then stops. “I was a journalist once” is what blurts out of his mouth, unplanned. “Came in the Great Lakes region to change the world with my writing, all those years ago. Nothing changed. Turned out I was more useful as a pilot.”

/

Shower’s got water this evening, warm-ish. Poe scrubs out the galleons of motor oil that ended in his hair and shaves closely. His personal way of convincing himself he’s not losing it. Yet.

He’s angry with himself. Maybe because of what he said to the TV team. Thing is, he still thinks he’s a journalist, deep inside. It’s just that what he came to do there is fucking hard. Bringing down SNOKE, one of the most powerful ore trading company on the international market? Probably impossible.

His leads all came to dead ends and he should probably admit defeat and leave. All the idealistic Westerner types do after a while, even Leia, who now directs her newspaper from her native Europe and lobbies all she can. Sure, he should leave because he doesn’t want to become another Han, who stayed when his dreams got broken and who’s become just another petty dealer in anything that’s not too harmful.

Yeah. Piloting is nice and makes him feel alive and he’s fucking good at it, the best, but the good he might sometimes do is a drop in an ocean of evil. That’s why he hates himself quite a lot, tonight. Because he’s got a way out and these women never had.

It’s going to be one of these nights. One where he needs to drink himself to oblivion or get fucked the same. He hopes he can manage the latter, because it’s the responsible thing to do re: piloting, even though there’s no mission planned next morning. Which is why he shuns their usual pilots’ lair and goes to the posher hotel lounge with its fair-skinned businessmen in light coloured cotton suits, its sunburnt NGO coordinators and its high-end journalists on short missions. As usual, it reeks of old, expensive whisky, good intentions, dark motives and money.

There’s a guy in a corner who spread sheets of papers and all kinds of pens on the whole surface of his table. He’s drawing, working from other sketches, photographs and memory at what seems to be portraits of African women. They look great from afar. Man’s good looking, older than Poe though not drastically so but when he looks up he doesn’t appear interested so Poe lets him be.

Better luck with the next one, sitting at the bar and nursing a drink. Slightly older again, with white-blond hair and the kind of sunburn that makes a very pale skin glow. Thin, sinuous, delicious lips that curve in a strangely vulnerable line. He’s definitely checking Poe out.

“Hi, I’m Poe, Poe Dameron,” he says, sitting close.

“Lor San Tekka,” says the man, and what kind of a name is it? Finnish, maybe, with features such as those. If it’s his real name at all. The man smiles but his pale blue eyes are glassy – he’s been crying, Poe realises, just his luck.

But Poe is a nice man, so he orders two drinks, throws an arm over the man’s shoulders and listens, since it’s obvious that what the guy needs is spilling out his soul more than fucking right now. And the more Lor San Tekka talks, the more Poe listens, because it turns out that the guy is a smartphone company executive that has been touring the country with SNOKE people. What he saw broke him, obviously. Blood and deaths and rapes, child soldiers coercing artisanal miners into relenting their ore. And the SNOKE guys looking for afar, throwing so few bucks at them and collecting the coltan.

Only Tekka has a good memory for places and names, and what he says is precise enough that Poe didn’t know everything of it.

“I should have gone on a last rendezvous,” says Tekka finally. “The day after tomorrow, in North Kivu west of Edward Lake, got the map with me in my phone. But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I bailed out, flying back to Finland tomorrow. I just couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” says Poe, applying more pressure with the hand on Tekka’s neck and bringing them shoulder to shoulder. “I’d tell you you’ll be alright but we both know it’s hard. At least you’ve taken yourself out of it.”

And then, because they both really want to, they walk up to Tekka’s suite. And because Poe’s a nice man, he fucks the guy although he’d maybe have preferred it the other way around. Gets the condoms out, because Tekka is too far gone to even think of it, which shows how unused he is to the realities of life in this place. Takes Tekka’s ass slowly, as deep and slow and tender as he can because the man needs it and fuck but it feels good. Does it again when they’re recovered and Tekka becomes passionate and spectacularly dirty-mouthed and even a bit rough, which they both need.

Then they cuddle together in the large bed and Tekka falls asleep.

And because Poe might be a nice man but is also a journalist, which means a bit of an asshole, he raises up and goes rummaging into Tekka’s phone. Retrieves the map together with a bunch of names and phones numbers as well as tables for production and prices and all of this is a treasure trove.

They wake up in the morning to the sound of gunfire in the street below.

“The FARDC,” says Poe, looking carefully through the window. “A bunch of the regular troops blowing up some steam. Better stay inside until they pass out from whatever drink they had.”

“I can’t,” says Tekka. “I’m boarding at 10 am, need to go to the airport.”

“There are other planes,” says Poe.

“I have to go. I really have to.” There’s panic in Tekka’s eyes and Poe lets go. The man’s an adult.

But maybe it was out of Poe’s hands anyway. You can’t live long in this godforsaken place without beginning to believe in fate and maybe it was written somewhere that Lor San Tekka would meet his today. He walks to the window, and Poe doesn’t even have the time to tell him to stay clear of the troopers’ line of sight.

There’s the short rap of a Kalashnikov on automatic, the crash of the window bursting in and Tekka falls backwards. Poe feels drops – globs? – of something warm on his face and brings his hand up. Blood, mostly. Tekka’s sprawled on the ground and couldn’t be deader. You don’t live with your brain splattered on the floor. Mostly on the floor.

He wishes he could say he feels rage or grief because they just fucked and then spent the night together. But all he can muster is pity among a sea of blankness. He walks to Tekka’s things on the nightstand and takes his phone, then gets out.

“You’ve got a dead man in room fifteen,” he says to the man at the counter. “Name was Lor San Tekka. Soldiers in the street did it, the window’s shattered.”

“Are you all right, sir?” asks the employee. “The blood…”

“Not mine,” says Poe. Then he takes a look at his hand and sees it’s pissing blood around embedded shards of glass. “Mostly,” he adds. “I’ll get my hand taken care of.”

/

Poe left his name and address at the hotel counter but he’s ready to bet nobody will do anything about Tekka’s death. Even though it might be premeditated murder. Especially if it is. Which means Poe might well need to be careful and to act very fast.

Which he’s doing, throwing down notes about what he can infer of the SNOKE situation, his bandaged hand thankfully not too damaged. He feels sort of feverish. Still not grieving or caving in under the horror of Tekka’s death although there’s a small voice inside that tells him he should. Full of adrenaline that makes him think clearer than ever. He knows it’s shock, but he’ll use it as long as he can. He needs it.

His flat is not much, as far as expats do, one room plus kitchen area and a shower in a villa that’s been divided into similar quarters for pilots who don’t make too much from their flying, but it’s still in a wealthy area of the city and it’s got a functioning phone – most of the time. Good thing it’s working today since Leia and Poe have so much to decide. He calls her.

“Poe!” she exclaims when the call finally gets through. “You don’t call often enough, my boy.”

“You call me boy once more and I call you General, General Sir.”

“Oh, shut up. What’s up?”

Poe tells her and she’s the one to not to talk for a while.

“General?” he finally asks. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate being able to silent you, but I’m the one paying for the call, huh.”

“My God, Poe. Goddammit, that’s dynamite. That’s La Résistance front page and middle fold. And I might pass some intel to well-placed French and European officials in advance. If you don’t mind.”

“Of course but you know it’s not enough. We need more proof than that. I mean, we sure can publish Tekka’s data on the prices they’re paying for coltan in these parts and show those original SNOKE files that link them to phone companies, but SNOKE executives meeting FARDC commanding officers in compromising places? We have to get photo or film evidence. I need to fly there.”

“Of course you know that’s fucking dangerous. Kylo Ren might tag along and he’s not going to be nice if they get their hands on you.”

“Of course. Of course you know I have to?”

“I know. Poe, are you okay? You sound strange.”

“Well, that’s what getting the lead of your life as a journalist mixed with watching the man you just fucked get murdered does to you, I guess. Frankly, don’t know. I think I’m still in shock.”

“Shit. Get some rest, my boy. When the adrenaline goes down, you’re going to feel damn exhausted. Do you have to fly today?”

“No, first thing tomorrow. Don’t know if I can sleep, though. Ah, well. Meanwhile I’m going to try to upload Tekka’s files for you, if the connexion holds. If I’m caught you’ll have the intel, I trust you to do something useful with it.”

“Don’t you dare getting caught, Poe.”

“I’ll do my best, General.”

“And stop with that General thing.”

“But you know you’re our General at heart, Leia. The Résistance General of all these scattered journalists in conflict zones everywhere.”

“Fuck off, Poe.”

“Sure. See you soon, huh.”

/

When Poe flies everything is simpler. He’s got the feel of the wings in his hands and enough distance between himself and the world’s troubles. And when he’s flying along Lake Kivu as right now, the morning sun reflected on the water, the sky still bright blue and the atmosphere washed by yesterday’s afternoon rains, first clouds small and high and cotton-white, it just feels right. Beautiful. That’s when he knows he’s not yet ready to leave the Democratic Republic of Congo, that he still loves that doomed place and its struggling inhabitants. That there are still things he believes in and is ready to fight for.

He flies along the Lakes as long as he can, turning west only above Lake Edward. Last leg of his flight is the complicated one as he tries not to mix one forested ridge with another and prays for no engine malfunction in a place where going down would mean crashing up the canopy with not a soul in sight. He can’t help the surge of pride when he finally identifies the half-hidden earth track he’s been aiming for, a short, technical landing on the upper part of a slope, not something on which SNOKE’s pilots would risk the life of their superiors.

Another burst of pride for his piloting abilities as he manages the perfect mountain landing, then it’s a matter of hiding the plane well enough under the trees and getting the GPS out for the short trek towards the rendezvous point. He’s on time.

At first everything goes well. They chose a place with minimum visibility from above which means it’s easy to hide in the trees and get a good vantage point. He gets the camcorder out and begins filming, positively jumping with glee everytime he identifies a new face. He’s too far to get any sound but the image will be enough. There are white people, high placed people. Some he knows, some he’ll have to run a search for and confront against Tekka’s phone contacts. Hux, perfect pale skin under a wide-brimmed hat, and there are rumours he’s got a seat on SNOKE’s mysterious directing committee. Kylo Ren, of course, which will break Leia’s heart some more. Some others. They’re shaking hands with men in the regular RDC army uniforms, one of them a colonel. The second in command in North-Kivu is a colonel, Poe recalls. One who’s been suspected of strong links with the FDLR, the Rwandan militia in Eastern Congo.

Following along, automatic gun at the ready, towers a spectacular woman. She’s well over six feet, with an athletic, supple build, cropped black hair and a skin so dark it seems to shine. She’s infamous enough for Poe to know her. Phasma, former child soldier, former Mai-Mai militia, a formidable, exceptional woman made war chief and occasional torturer, now integrated in the regular forces with the grade of captain. Around her, taking only her orders, mill a gaggle of boys in camo uniform. They’re carrying crates upon crates into trucks. Ore, obviously, and Hux is considerate enough to wish to check for it which gives Poe exactly the picture he needed.

Money changes hands, another bit of video Poe can’t wait to send to Leia. After that, things stall a little. The troopers keep on with the crates and Poe, realising he’s got enough, decides to jog back to his plane.

He’s not so sure when he reaches it, though. As that TV team would have said, what’s lacking is the human interest. The pathos. If Poe manages to get a ride with the soldiers, he might stumble on the miners themselves, the people they’re taking the ore from. Not a scoop, but a video that would make watchers understand the tragedy of this place.

Worth a try, and maybe that’s the adrenaline junkie thinking but he doesn’t care. He still decides to leave behind the most incriminating evidence, ejects the memory card from the camcorder and hides it inside the usual wing compartment. Leia knows where he planned to land and will retrieve the card if the worse comes to pass. Then he runs back towards the rendezvous place, in time to witness the SNOKE trucks leaving. The army Range Rovers are still there, unwatched as the troopers take a smoke around the last of the crates. Poe manages to climb up the ladder up to a truck roof, finding a few old ropes and a soggy tarp under which he lies flat.

/

“Kuacha!” someone yells in front of the trucks.

Poe perks up. He’s been feeling dumber and dumber as the trucks put on miles, watching his GPS and calculating how long it’s going to take to walk back to his plane. A few more miles and he’d have had to fall back. This looks like the last chance he’s going to get.

He gets the camcorder going and risks an eye and a lens out of the tarp. The men barring the way look totally bedraggled but they’re numerous, several of them talking vehemently in Swahili. Poe gets it enough to understand that they’re indeed miners, incensed by the prices they had to sell their coltan for and that they’re getting menacing as a the troopers step down the trucks with Phasma.

Poe keeps on filming, close enough to get some kind of sound this time, and feels the grief that didn’t come for Tekka’s death finally flood him. Because Phasma’s good and these men are going to get crushed. He can count two, no, three guns among them. The rest carry picks and shovels or even worse, staffs.

The one gun-carrying miner in the back finally seems to lose it. As he walks aside and opens fire, one of the troopers catches the movement and pulls his neighbour by his collar, getting him out of the line of fire. The rounds get lost in the bushes and Phasma barks an order.

They open fire.

The miners fall down and Poe keeps filming, tears streaking his cheeks. He should leave. He wanted pathos, he got crime and he feels dirty for witnessing it without doing anything except exploiting it for some journalistic, far-away purpose.

He should leave but his eyes catch the trooper from before, the one who got his comrade out of harm. He’s pointing his gun at the miners, same as every other soldier, but he’s not shooting. Poe reflexively zooms on him and sees the slumped shoulders, the wavering aim, the sweat on his face that might be tears. He pans to Phasma and realises she’s watching the soldier too.

What should he care? So the man’s burnt out, so his life expectancy amounts to days or even hours but he certainly committed other atrocities before, didn’t he? Why should he care, but he does, does feel a comradeship towards this only other man here who’s crying for the falling miners.

He pans back to the trooper, zooms as much as he can on his face. He’s going to die, soon, and the only thing Poe can do is recording his last act of defiance on video.

Then he takes a deep breath, shuts down the camcorder and slides out of the tarp, down the back ladder, crawls under the line of trucks until he sees the open line of the dirt road and the forest on each side. He stands and makes a bee line towards cover.

“Kuacha!” yells a ringing female voice, then “Stop! Arrêtez ou je tire!”

He stops. Finds the time to eject the second memory card but can’t bring himself to destroy it, thinking of the trooper’s sweaty, crying face. Hides it in his boot. Raises his hands, turns and waits.

Soldiers are already running towards him, as is Phasma, as is another who just jumped out of the front truck. Poe swears. Kylo Ren stayed with the soldiers.

Two men force his arms behind his back, force-march him until he’s standing in front of Ren and Phasma and send him wheezing and kneeling down with a nasty gun butt blow. Tall people, these guys. They’d have towered over him even without sending him down, but everyone has their insecurities. Especially Ren.

“So,” he says after a while. “Who talks first? You talk first? Keep to your native French, _Benjamin_. I know SNOKE frowns upon it but your English was always dreadful.” He’s careful to pronounce the name with every French nasals Leia ever used, and is rewarded with Ren blanching.

“Poe Dameron,” spits Ren, always one to state the obvious. He tosses his dark hair over his shoulder and turns ever so slightly to enhance the cut of his ninja-like clothes, black and hugging his figure in a way that must be very uncomfortable in the damp heat. The effect, in Poe’s opinion, is rather marred by the numerous bodies behind him.

Phasma snatches the camcorder and hands it to Ren. “With a camera,” Ren adds. In English. “It’s the journalist we’re talking to, not the pilot. Well well well. We’ll sort that at the base, we’ve lost too much time. Take him.”


	2. Chapter 2

The base, it turns out, is a sort of military camp, the sloppy kind. Poe counts two sentinels who are either bored to death or completely stoned. Sadly, the convoy troopers aren’t. They swiftly manhandle Poe out, manacle his hands and throw him on the ground, adding a few kicks for good measure.

Ren's booted feet appear in his field of vision. “The camera appears to be empty,” he says. “You won’t convince me you didn’t film that little altercation when we found you.”

“Altercation? Massacre, you mean,” spits Poe, which gains him a kick in the kidneys from some trooper behind. “Fuck.”

“Well, the memory card?”

Poe sighs and gestures to the chest pocket of his jacket with his chin. Ren retrieves the spare card and slips it in the camcorder, switches on. “Empty,” he says. “Don’t play with us, Dameron.”

“What? Empty? Fucking hell, you mean I took all these risks and the fucking card _malfunctioned_? Can I see? Ow!” Another kick.

“Stop that, man. You’re not funny. Search him.”

“I know I’m not funny, Ben. Shit, do you think the situation is funny, you asshole?” Poe keeps thinking of the way he zoomed on the trooper’s face. Keeps babbling, keeps trying to push back the moment when they’ll find the card, when they’ll watch a close-up of their man not killing anyone. They stand him up and he tries to shake his foot on the card side, tries to stomp on it and hopes he can damage it enough. Hates himself for having been so maudlin and so dumb.

They strip him, methodically, and get the cards out. His spares and the one in his boot, intact.

Poe finds the face of his trooper in the crowd. A handsome face, he notes absentmindedly. Strong jaw, a well-shaped mouth, eyelashes to die for. A very faint line on his forehead. Not a child anymore, a man, probably in his twenties. _I’m sorry_ , Poe thinks as hard as he can, as if he could convey it with the force of his mind. _So sorry_.

“You motherfucker!” Ren yells suddenly, taking Poe by the arms and shaking. “You motherfucker! Video starts with the miners! Damn you, where’s the rest?” Ren wrenches the card out and crushes it under his foot. Poe can’t help the relief that floods him and the half-smile he directs to his trooper. The man raises an eyebrow minutely.

“The rest?” asks Poe.

Phasma slaps him and turns to Ren. “Come on,” she says. “Who cares. We’ve got him, it’s just a matter of not letting him out alive.”

“Yeah?” Ren smirks. “Didn’t care for the miners, nobody will. But what do you think people will say if someone gets their hands on a recording of today’s transaction? Especially if Tekka managed to talk to someone?”

Phasma nods. “Okay, right. But you’ve got to get going, Kylo. They’ll be waiting for you. I’ll take care of him and you’ll finish this evening if needed.”

“I’ll love that,” says Ren, and Poe feels chilled to the bone in spite of the late morning heat.

/

They’re only beating him. With fists, boots, the butt end of their guns, but only hitting. Poe’s seen some people at the hospital, hell, he’s seen some bodies. He knows they can do so much worse and maybe knowing it is part of the torture.

He looks up to Phasma, spitting blood. He’s bitten his tongue and his left ear is ringing. “Come on,” he says, trying to smile. “You’re not doing your best there, are you?”

In her glorious face, her smile is ferocious and beautiful and deadly. “Yeah, pilot?” she says. “And how long do you think you can stand it, this minor game of mine?”

“It’s not a question of how long I can stand it,” Poe breathes out. “It’s that I don’t have anything to give you. I literally don’t have any other card up my nonexistent sleeve. So it’s a matter of how long before it kills me, huh.”

She huffs and motions with a hand and the beating resumes.

/

Poe has stopped reacting to blows when they finally stop.

“He really seems to be able to stand it,” Phasma muses. “Well, I’m bored, let’s just get him tired enough and leave him to Ren. I don’t enjoy this as much as he does. Stand up, you. Oh, and give him back his clothes.”

Standing up seems to be the best way to get them to stop kicking so Poe manages.

“You keep on standing,” Phasma tells him as she motions to the troopers around. “You go down, they shoot. That simple.”

/

His trooper is among his guards and Poe must have gone a bit delirious because he’s begun dreaming of telling him how his presence sweetened his last hours.

He’s handsome. He’s definitely handsome and it’s completely unfair that Poe had to wait for the day of his death to fall in love. Because that’s absolutely what’s happening. Even if he’s delirious. So he looks all his fill and takes joy in it, tries to commit everything to his memory.

Handsome Trooper is definitely among the oldest soldiers here, not terribly tall but with a man’s build and the poise of a man used to his own body. Strong shoulders, narrow waist, mouthwatering ass. But he’s also acting as someone who knows the place and all its rules like the back of his hands, which means he’s been at this for a long, long time. Former child soldier, then, one who grew up into just a soldier. A feat of resilience in itself. Yet he stands ever so slightly apart from the others.

Handsome Trooper rummages in his pocket and fishes out a _book_ , a battered, coverless paperback. Holy shit. How can a man who stands out so much, who refuses to kill and who _reads_ can still be alive among the wolves?

That’s when Poe sways a little too much, causing a sharp pain to a broken rib, stumbles down and gets his answer. His trooper seizes his gun and aims in a fluid movement, sending a single round less than one inch from Poe’s hand. Poe stands up in haste and ends looking straight into his eyes. The man’s gaze is clear, guileless. He raises half an eyebrow again and Poe’s certain the bullet went exactly where he wanted.

So the man is a good shot. An excellent one. Poe hopes it’s enough to save him.

The rain begins to pour. His guards take refuge under a tarp set over some poles but let him standing in the rain. They didn’t bother with his shirt when they gave his clothes back and only set the jacket over his shoulders and bound hands, so he’s soon shivering as rivulets run down his naked torso.

Then he notices Handsome Trooper’s eyes are on him again. On his body, rather.

Well.

He tilts his head back, trying to lick the cascading water. It does help his thirst and if it enhances the line of his jaw and the curve of his throat or gets his pecs to peek out a little more, it’s but a plus. Then he tries another angle with his head, sideways, licks his lips – hmmmm, water – and checks out Handsome Trooper from under his lashes. The man is licking his lips in echo.

Dammit.

Can you seduce a man while bound and beaten up? Well, some people would say yes, for sure, but contrary to what’s whispered in some parts of Bukavu, that’s not what rocks Poe’s boat. Usually. Right now, seducing’s the key word, whatever the means.

But of course that’s when Phasma the cockblocker turns up, carrying a plastic bag. She hands it to Handsome Trooper, who nods but passes it along without opening it. Phasma looks searchingly for a while, then leaves.

There are syringes in the bag, syringes, plural, still sealed in plastic. Also small packs of white powder that get the soldiers whooping excitedly. Handsome Trooper takes another man aside, the one he already got out of the miner’s fire, and whispers urgently in his ear. Trooper number two shakes his head, snatches a syringe, a spoon and a dose. Handsome Trooper talks some more, louder, until Trooper number two pushes him back and goes away.

A celebration, Poe guesses. That’s not the drugs they usually get, and Handsome Trooper is distressed about that. Won’t touch it. Clever man.

Then Trooper number two begins to tremble and shake and then vomits. Handsome Trooper seems to be the only one to notice or to care and kneels beside him, holding him bent forward and the guy keeps on throwing up and throwing up some more. He finally stops but Handsome Trooper doesn’t seem to think it good and yells in the man’s face, something in Swahili, “Kupumua, kupumua,” breathe, breathe. Breathe. Trooper number two’s respiration does seems increasingly erratic and slow and Handsome Trooper appears increasingly panicked, until he lets go of his friend and lays him in the dirt. He remains kneeling on the ground for some time, then fishes out some rag and wipes number two’s mouth. Says something to another soldier, who shrugs and turns away.

Handsome Trooper gets out in the rain and comes back with Phasma, who doesn’t seem that interested but points to picks and shovels on a wall. Handsome takes two of each, puts them in the hands of another soldier and bends to carry the body of his friend.

Poe’s seen death before, no way he couldn’t, but he thinks never so many, never so close, never that way. He closes his eyes and wishes he could pray.

Time passes. Handsome comes back. Poe feels cold and aching and exhausted and standing up is increasingly hard. The other guards are high and they’ve begun shooting everywhere but especially at Poe’s feet, yelling challenges. A bullet pierces his boot and grazes his foot. Grazes only, thank God. He can still stand but he’s probably going to die very soon.

That’s when Handsome yells something, pointing at a row of birds high on a tree a decent distance away from where they stand. The others stop to look while he aims and fells a bird, then whoop and try their skills at whatever birds they haven’t scared away.

Fucking hell, thinks Poe. Better the birds than me. He nods at Handsome and maybe Handsome nods back.

/

Ren’s back early, the sun still high in the west and now Poe knows he’s going to suffer and die. They’ve brought him inside a small bare room and bound him on a chair in the middle. He’s afraid, increasingly wondering if the memory card is worth it. Maybe he just wants an easy death.

“I don’t want your body to get more mangled than it already is. Never good for a white guy, it raises too many questions when they find it,” Ren is saying. Poe’s never seen that side of him, the way he positively basks in the power he’s getting over his prisoner. He wonders what exactly Ren does for SNOKE. He’s scared, scared shitless. Handsome is nowhere to be seen. Nor anybody else.

“Ha, you know, white,” he hears himself say nonetheless.

Ren snorts. “Latino, whatever, funny guy. Same thing here. Won’t save you. Especially since I don’t have that much time. SNOKE people aren’t happy, huh. Because of what you did, they want me with them tonight as well as tomorrow. We’ll be laying out _strategies_ , you know.”

Poe can’t help the smirk. “Oh, strategies? You’re ridiculous, Ben.”

“Shut up!” yells Ren. “Well, Dameron, let’s see if you find what’s next _ridiculous_ as well. I’m told you witnessed a fatal overdose this afternoon? Well, what would you say of one of your very own? We’ll go slowly, see. Small dose upon small dose. Reasonably. Slow enough that you can change your mind. I’m told it’s not a nice death. You either choke on your vomit or just forget how to breathe. Let’s begin? I’m sorry if I don’t find the vein at once, that’s not something I do very often.”

Poe’s never took worse than the occasional pot or booze and he hates hard drugs. Fears them. Flashes of Trooper number two’s death come unbidden and he can’t find anything to say, just realises he’s recoiling in the chair, trying to push himself into the back as far as possible from Ren.

Ren’s eyes shine. “Scared, are you?” he whispers.

First dose leaves him feeling great and intensely relieved. What kind of torture method makes you feel better than ever? “You just wait,” Ren whispers again in his ear.

Second dose make him feel even better, but there’s an edge of anguish to it, the feeling there’s going to be a moment when everything tilts downwards. Third dose still feels good, but unhinged and scary, and his chest feels heavy, heavy like oxygen’s overrated, like maybe he should tell himself to breathe.

He does. He checks. Still breathing. Ren over him looks strange, the black of his clothes blending on the edge, making him a kind of time-lapsing cape. His features seem to elongate into a bizarre mask and his voice sounds distorted and metallic. Poe tries to jerk away, feels the ropes dig into his wrists, anchoring him somewhat to the dire reality. He moans and shakes his head.

Ren waits for a while but Poe can’t bring himself to talk, not that a part of his mind isn’t trying to. But talking and breathing at the same time feel like too much work.

So the fourth dose goes in and it’s definitely too much. It gives him a shake, takes him out of his lethargy, but at the same time his chest is just too heavy and he feels the nausea build up. He sees himself lying in Handsome's arms, sees Handsome wipe his own mouth. Wills his chest to go on moving and tries to hold the nausea at bay. Wills himself to talk. He’s no hero, finally. He wants to live, even for a few hours more.

“Bravo Bravo,” he manages to croak.

“Huh, what?”

“The card. Bravo Bravo eight.”

“Fucking hell, Dameron, what are you babbling about? Concentrate, man, or do you want that fifth dose?”

“Noooo,” says Poe, listening to the way the ‘o’ sounds so distorted. “Bravo Bravo eight, BB-8. That’s my plane. Its licence number.”

“Where is it?” urges Ren.

Poe tells him and realises he’s crying.

“Great,” triumphs Ren. “Finally. Wasn’t that hard, uh? Your plane’s a bit too far for today, we’ll get it tomorrow. Enjoy your respite. You’ve earned yourself a nice clean death when we come back.”

Poe’s left alone in the room. He lies back and wills himself to keep on breathing.

/

Poe certainly can’t sleep but he closes his eyes. Easier to concentrate on breathing that way. Then someone’s tugging at his bounds and undoing the knots and he opens his eyes. He’s surprised to see the sun through the door, low on the horizon. He thought more time had passed. Then he concentrates on the man working at the ropes.

“Handsome,” he croaks.

“What?” says the man, in English.

Fucking hell. “No, nothing,” he mumbles.

Handsome throws his shirt and jacket at him. “Here,” he says, “put that on.” Poe notices he still has his Kalashnikov in hands and aims it very accurately.

“Hands in front,” Handsome goes on. He makes a fast work of binding them single-handedly. “Can you stand?”

“Damn sure,” says Poe, and at least heroin’s good for that because he probably should ache all over but he can’t feel a thing.

“Good,” says Handsome as he manhandles him up, then shoves his gun between his ribs. “Go on.”

There’s probably some adrenaline at work because suddenly Poe feels he can breathe easier. They walk down the length of the camp, eliciting only a few vaguely curious glances. Once Handsome says something and Poe catches bits about taking a crap and not wanting to clean up inside.

When they’ve passed the sentinel Handsome suddenly swerves and pushes Poe against a tree, pulls at the loose knots around his wrists and sets him free. “I’m getting you out of here,” he says.

“What?”

“I’m getting you out of here.”

“But why?” Poe wouldn’t be adverse to a declaration of love right now.

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

Disappointment combined with the heroin high combined with his usual sense of the ridiculous get a long, much too sonorous laugh out of him. Handsome’s hand flies up and presses against his mouth. It’s nicely wide and calloused and also quite moist. Come to think of it, Handsome’s presently sweating buckets. Poe finally understands and smiles.

“You’re getting _yourself_ out of here.”

Handsome nods. Something behind him catches Poe’s eye.

“And you need a pilot?”

“I need a pilot. Can you pilot that?” he doesn’t add _in the state you are_ but obviously thinks it very much. Poe feels a tad affronted.

“I can fly any bush plane!” Then he really sees what was hidden behind the trees. “Fucking hell, that’s a Piper M600! Been dreaming to get my hands on one! Come on, Handsome!”

“Handsome?”

Feigning deafness might be the best strategy right now. Poe runs the last yards, climbs in and buckles up. Thankfully, nothing’s locked down and the key’s on the ignition. Not many plane thieves that deep in the jungle. “Oh, fuck me sideways,” he says fervently.

“Is there anything wrong?”

“Oh no, not at all! It’s only, it’s only that thanks to you, I’ve just gone from failure and certain death to pilot’s heaven. Oh my God. There’s a yoke! And the cabin’s pressurised! Ha, they even took the rare wood option! Filthy rich people, huh?”

There are also more switches and electronics than in anything Poe’s piloted before, and it takes him some minutes to figure it out.

“We really should go,” says Handsome. “Phasma’s not a fool and she’ll begin to wonder where I am.”

“Yeah, yeah. Is that the fuel dial?”

“How the fuck would I know?”

“It _is_ the fuel dial. We’re good. Oh, damn, there’s a parking brake. Wait a sec’.”

He finally disengages the brake but not before they hear some shouts in the distance.

“And we’re up!” yells Poe.

As they rise above the canopy, Poe gets a glimpse of the four, no, five trucks parked close to the camp. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he mumbles.

“What?”

“Say, would you be adverse to me flying low over the camp?”

“WHAT?”

“I mean, if I manage to open the door in the air, you could shoot at the trucks down there. I – I don’t like the idea that Ren, or Phasma for that matter, can drive after us easily, find some other plane somewhere.”

“Yeah, okay, can do!”

“You’re incredible. They’ll shoot us too, you know?”

“I know! Fucking scares me!”

“You’re incredible.”

Poe turns on the wing and pushes on the yoke – the yoke! Crazy people – gets the plane low enough. There’s already gunfire, thankfully going wide. After some struggling with emergency switches the door deigns to open and Handsome fires at once. “Got them!” he shouts. “Two down!”

“You’re the best!” shouts Poe in answer. “Another go?”

“Sure!”

Gunfire is somewhat more accurate on their second pass and Poe’s quite sure something happened around the landing gear area. He hopes it’s not too grievous.

“Listen,” he says. “When you’re done shooting, I’ll probably make some harsh manoeuver to get us out of there. Nothing dangerous, huh, but it’s going to shake a little!”

Handsome aims and shoots and two other trucks go up in flame. The last one follows one second later and Poe takes the plane into a vertical climb. “Woohoo!” he yells, and can’t help adding a barrel roll to the exit once they’re high enough.

“You’re high!” shouts Handsome, looking green around the gills.

“Like a kite!”

He levels the plane and switches on the autopilot. If he typed in the coordinates correctly, they should come to BB-8’s position in ten minutes time. Long enough.

“My name is Poe, Poe Dameron,” he says. “What’s yours? I can’t keep on calling you Hands- I mean, keep on not knowing what to call you.”

Handsome looks into his eyes and says, “FN-2187.”

During an instant, Poe thinks he didn’t hear right, that Handsome’s got a Swahili name he didn’t catch or even a name in some more obscure local language. Then he realises that no, there really were two letters and a number afterwards.

“ _What?_ ”

“FN-2187, the others usually shortened it to eighty-seven.”

“Sorry to ask again, but what’s that?”

“Nickname, the serial number of my first gun. See, there was this guy, he was English, got into his head to teach us our letters and numbers when we were still young kids. We practiced on what we had at hand, uh. Guns. We all gave each other FN nicknames. Slip, I mean, the soldier that overdosed today, he was FN-2003. Only when he grew up he got another name while mine stuck. Maybe because I’m a good shot.”

Also because you stood apart, thinks Poe. “And before the nickname?” he asks.

“Can’t remember. Don’t know if they ever called me anything else than hey you, or something of the like.”

Fucking hell, thinks Poe. And he still grew up the man he is. “Well, I ain’t using it,” is what he finally settles for. “FN, uh? Can I call you Finn?”

“Finn,” says Finn, and his smile goes straight to Poe’s heart. “I like that!”

/

Poe eyes the slope landing thoughtfully. Not going to be easy. The sun has just gone under and the track is very short for the Piper. Well, can’t be helped.

“What are you doing?” says Finn, a panicked edge to his voice. “Why are we going back to the forest? I thought we were going to the lakes!”

“I’ve got to get Betabeta back! BB-8, my plane!” yells Poe over the noise of the half open door.

“What? But this one’s better!”

“It’s not mine! And it’s _too_ good. Too complicated, too many electronics and potential failures in a country like this! Also, BB-8 carries my memory card.”

“Shit, we’re doing this for a memory card?”

“Exactly,” smiles Poe as he engages the landing gear, trying not to let Finn see he’s holding his breath. There’s an unearthly crack but everything seems to settle in place. He wipes the sweat out of his forehead.

He takes the time to set a hand on Finn’s thigh. At least he’ll have that if things go wrong. “It’s going to get a bit rough,” he says. “tighten your harness. Also, mountain landings are always spectacular. It’s normal if you feel the slope’s getting at you. Fast.”

Poe aims for the lowest possible touching point on the track and gets it right. The Piper might be heavy but it’s wonderfully responsive, flaring nicely under his hand and for a moment Poe thinks he’s done it. But their weight means they’re still going fast, too fast and he knows he won’t stop the plane before the reach the upper part and the trees beyond.

He gives everything he can, braking hard until the weakened right wheel gives and the plane tilts sideways and plants down hard, just meters from the first trunks. Poe has the time to see Finn getting ejected through the open door on his right then the violent jerk throws him forward and he blacks out.

It could have gone so much worse, he thinks when he comes to, only seconds or minutes later since there’s still some light in the sky. He can see Finn moving a few yards from the plane and he himself is alive. Actually, he’s sure there are so many other realities where they didn’t make it. Where Finn got ejected higher and they got separated, roaming aimlessly in the forest. Where he died in the crash. Where Finn did.

He unbuckles gingerly and goes to check on Finn. His head hurts like hell even through the heroin haze and he can feel the blood running down his temple. Finn doesn’t look so fresh himself, sitting down and hugging his right arm.

“You okay?” asks Poe.

“Think I broke something in my shoulder.”

Poe can see it. Clavicle. “I’ve got a first aid kit in BB-8,” he says. “Come on, let me help you.”

He crouches and gets his arm around Finn’s waist on his good side. Finn smells a little of shea butter and a lot of the kind of acrid sweat you get when you’ve just been provided with enough terrors to last you for a lifetime. Poe guesses he doesn’t smell so good either. He pulls gently up. “Ow!” says Finn.

“What’s the matter? Another wound?”

“Back hurts.”

Fucking hell. Poe stops dead. “A lot? You can move your toes?”

“Definitely. I’m good, Poe. Let’s get going. You’ve got painkillers in that plane?”

“Sure.”

Poe gets Finn’s arm in some semblance of sling and they argue for a good while afterwards, Poe feeling Finn should go lie behind because of his back and Finn wanting to sit in front. Finn wins but it’s only because it’s really getting dark and Poe doesn’t want to try a night take off on an unlit slope.

Take off is easy. There’s really no better plane than the Broussard. “Welcome to Dameron airlines,” he says. “The pilot and his crew wish you a great flight and remind you not to unbuckle yourself in any circumstances. Refreshments are under the seat and toilets are upon landing.”

“Uh,” says Finn. “What?”

“Sorry,” says Poe. “Bad joke. That’s how big plane crews greet passengers on board. More or less. Do you want something to eat? I’ve got cereal bars. Water?”

“Water, please.”

Poe drinks and passes on the jug then unwraps a cereal bar. “Sure you don’t want some?”

“What’s that?”

“Cereal bar, as I said. Grilled cereals and sugar, mostly.”

“Oh, like Mars bars?”

“Yeah, only healthier and with a much nastier taste. I nicked them from Jess.”

“Who’s Jess?”

“Another pilot, American like me. She’s a health freak, keeps bringing back organic food when she comes back from visiting her folks.”

“Health freak,” mutters Finn for himself, chewing on the bit of cereal bar he finally took. “Organic food. What’s that.”

“Sorry,” says Poe. “Rich people things. American things. It’s just – you speak such a good English, made me forget for a while… How many languages do you speak, Finn?”

“Oh. Swahili and French, of course. Some Bembe, I think my parents must have spoken it, a few sentences in Mbole, Slip sometimes said them. English, obviously. I learned it with the guy who taught me my letters. That’s why Phasma keeps, well, kept choosing me for the missions with the SNOKE guys. She said if I could bring myself to care less I could become an officer.”

“You’re quite exceptional, you know?”

“Am I,” mutters Finn, looking down. “I think you are, too. You kept smiling, this afternoon. You stood there and looked at me and you smiled. And I never heard someone talk back like that to Ren.”

Poe snorts. “I smiled? Didn’t realise. As for Ren, well. Me and my big mouth… I’ll settle for exceptionally dumb, huh.”

Finn shivers. Poe realises he got rid of his camo jacket somewhere and wears only a short-sleeved black Tee. He shrugs out of his own leather jacket. He’s too warm anyway, some remains of the adrenaline surge or the lasting effects of drug, he doesn’t know. He drapes the jacket around Finn’s shoulders.

Finn slides his left hand inside the sleeve. “What –” he begins.

“Keep it,” says Poe. “You were cold. And it suits you.”

Finn pats the worn leather and blinks a few times. “You saved my life,” he blurts.

“Ain’t that the other way around, pal?”

“Phasma. I – I guess she had finally enough of me and, enough of me and my caring. While you were with Ren, she told me to report to her barrack, to bring my gun. Empty. I know her, I’ve known her for so long. She’d have killed me.”

Poe clears his throat. “I think I knew that, feared that, since the first time I saw you. I filmed you, you know, back when you didn’t shoot on the miners. You were crying, well, I thought you were.”

Finn’s looking ahead in the growing darkness and nodding.

“I also filmed her when she was looking at you. It was scary.”

Around them the air is calm in the setting night. No turbulences, no strong wind. Poe guesses the plane can pilot itself long enough.

He turns sideways, gets his arms out of the harness and gathers Finn in an awkward hug. Finn’s good hand settles on his back and pulls them together as hard as he can. Poe has to curve around the gas handle.

“I’m glad you found me,” he says, lips grazing Finn’s neck. “I’m glad we saved each other.”

Finn’s only breathing on the side of his neck, warm puffs tickling the lobe of his ear. Poe wishes it could last forever. Then he feels the plane swerve lightly on the right and only wishes Broussards had an autopilot. He gently disengages and corrects the course.

“Look”, he says after a while. “The great lakes.” Lake Edward is glowing under the moonlight on their left. Fifty miles to the south, Lake Kivu is still hidden by the volcanoes and the lights of Goma are too dim to be seen. The familiar emotion seizes his heart and if he’s watching Finn’s reaction it’s – well, emotions you can share are always the deepest.

Finn doesn’t say anything but Poe sees how his eyes, dimly glowing in the instruments panel lights, go wider. His left hand comes to cover Poe’s on the gas handle.

Poe’s vision blurs. The near blackout of exhaustion, not the welcome wetness of a too-strong feeling.

“Well, buddy,” he says, hoping to hide the most of his dizziness. “Talk to me? It’s –” oh, damn, he thinks, why not admit it after all? “It’s that I’m tired and we still have around forty minutes of flying. Don’t let me fall asleep?”

Finn nods and begins talking. Stories from the books he read. Stories about Slip, the soldier who overdosed, and Nines, another of the FN boys, who still might be alive if he wasn’t napping under the trucks as he often does. Places he saw, people he met. The Englishman who taught him to read. A woman he remembers only as the one who sang him songs in Bembe. He’s lucky, he says, that he doesn’t remember more, and his voice gets darker. He does his best to keep tragedies out of his tales but they sort of stand on the sides and colour everything he says.

Poe keeps the plane flying and listens.


	3. Chapter 3

He’ll never be able to say how he landed the plane. All he knows is that he wakes up thirty-six hours later in a room that’s not his own, a drip in his arm, Finn awake and  lying at his left on the other bed, looking at him.

“Finn,” he whispers, “you alright?”

Finn smiles. “Never been better. Got a cast for my arm and my back’s not that broken.”

“Not _that_ broken?”

“Only a spinal? Uh, no, spinous process,” he says, smiling in delight at the new word. “Painful but not dangerous. I’m told I’m better lying down or walking than sitting, that’s all.”

“And you’ve never been better, huh.”

There’s a rustle of paper and small amused chuckle on Poe’s right. He turns around and has to remember again how to breathe because Leia might be his personal hero, and a damn great journalist with that, but at his side sitting on a chair is Dr Denis Mukwege and the man is, he should be _everyone’s_ personal hero.

Leia. Damn.

“I’ve got to put my hand on a phone with an international line,” he blurts to RDC’s greatest hero. “And I need an internet connexion, a fast one, if possible.” He suddenly realises he’s got no idea where he put the memory card. Is it still in the plane? Damn, his brain feels _muddy_. And he aches all over, head, ribs, foot, hand and everything inbetween. He touches gingerly the side of his head, where it got hit during the Piper crash.

“It’s all right,” says Dr Mukwege. “You were concussed but not severely so. I’d bet you slept so long because of the heroin aftershock and from sheer exhaustion, that’s all.”

“The phone,” begs Poe and then cringes at how disrespectful he sounds. “Please.”

“Although you still sound mildly disoriented,” Dr Mukwege adds. “It’s all right. You already phoned Leia Organa and transmitted the contents of that memory card. Actually, when you were brought at the hospital you wouldn’t let us treat your wounds before you’d gotten that damn phone. You seemed to think you had to outrun SNOKE’s strategies and so I guess that your scoop is currently under press. At least your video is already on the La Résistance website with a short burb that Organa wrote. You did a good job, Mister Dameron.”

He extends a hand and Poe takes it, refraining from asking for an autograph. He’s an adult, dammit. Also, maybe Finn can ask for one on his cast.

 “I was lucky,” Poe says, thinking of Lor San Tekka, and the miners, and Slip. “And I met Finn.”

“A remarkable young man,” says Dr Mukwege. To Poe’s delight, Finn gasps a little and tries quite ineffectually to hide his smile.

/

The next weeks are absolutely uneventful. After Poe’s scoop and the following articles, SNOKE absolutely doesn’t crumble down to a terrible end. It just fades, a little, pushing away as far as it can every compromised executive. Hux is called “an ambitious sales agent who overstepped his orders” and gets fired. Kylo Ren disappears. SNOKE actions take a plunge and the company may, or may not, lose a few contracts. It certainly loses loads of money.

But what else Poe could have hoped? That’s the way it is.

The FARDC do exactly as before and cover for rapes and engage in a dirty war with the M23 and exactly zero artisanal miner gets to sell their ore directly at a fair market price. Poe writes about it, a few in-depth articles that begin with the tale of the murdered miners and then segue to the lack of State in the Great Lake regions, the economic mining wars, the necessity of rebuilding a society and promoting awareness of the value of women in a place where even children were coerced into committing crimes.

The French TV team comes back and interviews Finn. Poe’s at once scared for his safety, proud of his courage and baffled by his charisma.

For a few days, maybe a week or two, the world at large might be a little more aware of Eastern Congo. Then another tragedy chases the old one and everyone forgets.

Step by step, thinks Poe. Step by step, until we get to the other side. He’d better believe it, or he’ll just have to pack and leave.

/

Sometime during these weeks Poe and Finn get discharged together. Poe would so much like to invite Finn to settle at his flat but knows it’s the worse idea ever. Finn doesn’t need to orbit around a slightly bitter American expat. He needs to meet his own people, needs to get to know the city he’s living in, needs to find his own place in life. So he brings him to Maz Kanata’s program. Maz was Kenyan once, married a Banyamulenge man and settled in Bukavu. Then he died, she got more than her share of terrors and tribulations in the wars and when her pay as a teacher became ridiculous she stayed there anyway, coordinating the local NGO program for the reinsertion of former child soldiers and destroyed women.

“You’ll see,” Poe says. “She always says she’s too old for this shit but really she loves it. And you’ll love her.”

Finn does love the place, mostly, thinks Poe, because there are so many books. Also because Maz talks to him and it seems everything he can’t tell Poe, every dark place he went, he can tell Maz. He settles there, in the Takodana reinsertion program. He’s still quiet and attentive and still stands a little apart. Sometimes, he tells Poe he misses his gun.

/

They never go back to the intimacy they had in the night of their escape. At least, three weeks after, it feels like never.

So Poe goes back to piloting. It passes the time. Sometimes it even helps someone.

/

A month in, Maz takes Poe aside.

“About this young man Finn,” she says. “Finn, no last name.”

“Finn’s not even his name,” says Poe. “It’s a nickname I gave him to replace his old one, which was – which I couldn’t bring myself to use.”

“I don’t know,” says Maz. “He definitely gave Finn as his name. Anyway. He’s quite something, isn’t he? Got a knack for words and languages, can’t stop learning, is probably not that bad with numbers either. And loves to take care of others. Would be a shame if he didn’t find a way to study somehow.”

“Yes? I’m aware. He’s fucking incredible.”

“Thing is, he needs some sort of official status, someone to help him with the administration and also the money. I thought – I thought, Poe, you could become his guardian, I mean legally speaking.”

“What? But Finn is an adult?”

“An adult who still needs to learn everything about civil life, uh. So?”

“Oh, Maz. I’ll gladly help him with all the money I can give, and I can show him how to fill in forms and apply for tuitions and the like, but a guardian, I – no. No. I can’t. I don’t want that kind of relationship with him.”

“Why, Poe? I thought you were close, the both of you?”

“But we _are_ close. We’re damn close and the thing is, I’d fucking love if we were even closer. I love him, Maz, I know it’s not something you should make public around here and I know I’m not the best for him but _I love him_!” He sighs and goes on. “I don’t want to become, uh, answerable for his actions. Responsible. Some kind of parental figure. Hell, in my short experience of us doing things together, _he’s_ been the responsible one.”

“My God, Poe,” says Maz. “That explains so much,” and she goes to hug him. Good thing that he’s not that tall because she’s absolutely tiny and has to stand on tiptoe.

“What does it explain?”

“I guess you’ll have to figure by yourself.”

/

He doesn’t figure anything.

Leia comes back, Poe’s not quite sure why. She says her newspaper can withstand her leave, she says she thinks Poe needs caring for.

Leia in South Kivu means that Han comes around more often and it’s both heartwarming and terribly sad to witness them orbiting around each other, at first carefully and then faster and faster and more openly, until they always stand and sit together and Leia ends wedged in the bend of Han’s body and everything is made better.

They walk on tiptoe around Poe for a while, Leia at once oddly formal and overly careful, never a “my boy” in her mouth, Han more acerbic than ever. Finally Poe can’t stand it anymore and confronts them.

“I miss who Ben was,” he says. “Certainly not as much as you but I do. And Kylo Ren is a sick bastard. But you’re not responsible for what he did to me, hear? Never. Don’t know what he found in SNOKE, money, adventure, darker pleasures, but that’s SNOKE which did that to him, not you.”

“Oh my boy,” says Leia, at the same time as Han just says “Kid…” and while Han puts a hand on his shoulder Leia pulls him into a tight embrace. For once he doesn’t mind that he’s thirty-two and they still call him that and lets himself be petted and cajoled by his two oldest friends and maybe he needed it as much as they did.

They take an interest in Finn. “You say he misses his gun?” asks Leia. “He seems to have been sniper-level good, that makes sense.”

“But he doesn’t want to kill anymore,” objects Poe.

“I know what to give him,” she says. “With such a great eye and an interest for his surroundings, I’m sure he’ll excel at that kind of shooting, too.”

She gets him a still camera, a good one. And of course he excels at it, Poe delighting in calling him hotshot without remorse.

/

Han sometimes works alongside Poe, sometimes not. One day he comes back from a forest trip with a mystery. A girl, eighteen or nineteen, who he says helped him repair his plane after an engine failure. She’s swift, fast with her fists, dangerous with a gun, lethal with a knife. Feral. She says, in a decent, Congolese-accented French and a better English that her parents told her they’d come back, long ago. She says she’s Rey, no last name. She’s white. Nobody can trace her back to anyone alive.

For a while she tags along them in the hangar, taking to the mechanics of BB-8 like a duck to water, actually improving a few of its quirks. But BB-8 is Poe’s very old cantankerous child and after a while he pushes her aside, not really conscientiously or even hard, only in the way he needs some room for himself.

She ends in Takodana too, soon earning a decent reputation as a mechanic and making some good money from it. She’s a revelation to Finn and Finn’s a revelation to her. They’re both fast learners, brilliant and with no idea of how to behave in a crowd. They’re both new to the city life, its dangers and its foods and its people. They’re close in age, both young adults, although Poe can’t help thinking Finn is the more mature of the two, but still young adults who survived a shattered childhood.

They keep more and more to each other and Poe is left grieving in a corner, trying to look like he’s glad for them and just retiring when he knows his foul mood will become too much for him to hide.

/

It’s not that Poe doesn’t get some quality time with Finn. Actually, it might even be Finn who comes looking for him most of the time. He’ll ask Poe what he’s doing and sometimes they’ll go to the market together, or find a place to swim in the lake, or Poe will take Finn up for a short flight, the latter so sweet and so excruciatingly painful. Finn’s hand hovers over Poe’s on the gas handle sometimes but he’ll never touch it anymore and Poe won’t dare hug him.

Sometimes Finn only stays and watches as Poe fixes something on his plane and things feel right again because they’re just there, together, no particular expectation and no question asked nor answered.

That’s during one of these times that the damn bolt falls under the plane floor.

“Hijo de puta,” growls Poe.

“What?”

“Huh, lost the last of my 8 mm expansion bolts under the floor. Last time I checked, they wasn’t one in sight in the whole town.” Poe opens the trap and rummages blindly inside.

“Maybe I can help you?”

“Your arms are just as long as mine. I should know, you’re wearing my jacket. Again.”

“But I’m more flexible.”

“All right, you young flexible thing. Let’s try together.”

They work well together, decides Poe. Should do it more often, even if it’s only to fish out a rebel bolt. Finn gets bored of just digging around after a while and gets a crowbar to use it to try and push the bolt towards Poe. It sort of works in that he reaches the bolt, but getting it to roll the right way is a whole different story.  It soon turns into something like a blind hockey match, the both of them laughing and trying to score against the other by pushing the bolt with increasingly outlandish tools.

They move shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest even, arms plunging deep through the narrow trap, and maybe Poe feels a little more out of breath than their microscopic hockey field should allow for. Maybe Finn is, too, Poe muses when his eyes fall on Finn’s flaring nostrils, on his lips so close that he feels the short, hot, tantalising puffs of breath on his own.

But it turns out that Poe’s too much of a coward to try his luck, so he finally fishes out the bolt and brandishes it triumphantly, strategically taking a step back and thanking the fates for his loose pants.

“I win!” he bellows.

“ _We_ win,” protests Finn, jumping to steal the bolt. “It was a collaborative effort!”

“Give me that back,” says Poe as Finn makes for the door with his prey, “it’s the last one in town!”

“Come and get it!” yells Finn, but he’s laughing so hard he can only collapse when Poe rushes to him.

They sit side by side on the floor, the side of their hands touching. It feels good. Finn passes the bolt to Poe who brings it to his eye. “My Precious,” he says with mock adoration.

“I know!” says Finn. “That’s from the Lord of the Rings!”

‘You’ve read it?”

“You bet I did.”

“Finn, I just love you. You’re incredible.”

“You’re saying that because I read a book about dark lords and fucking elves? In which, if I may say, the only black people are sort of evil and get killed in no time?”

“And what if I do?”

Finn gets his arm across Poe’s shoulders. It feels even better. “Don’t worry, Poe. I liked the book too. White people and all. It ends in peace.”

And that’s Finn, thinks Poe. When you think he’s all fun and banter he says something that guts you.

“What did you say when the bolt fell?” asks Finn when the silence becomes too much. “It sort of sounded like French, but wasn’t?”

“If you thought it sounded like French, you probably understood the last word, uh?”

“Sure, I know you were swearing, ‘something de pute’, probably. But what’s the language?”

“Oh. Spanish. Hijo means son.”

“I thought you were American? Why Spanish?”

“Because it was my parents’ mother tongue, I mostly spoke Spanish with them. There are a lot of people like us in the US, we’re Latinos. My parents were from Guatemala.”

“I don’t even know where that is,” Finn muses, not really a question. “The world is fucking larger than what you think when you’re dug in the forest trying to stay alive.”

“It is. Maybe we’ll – maybe you’ll get around some parts of it someday, uh.”

“Yeah.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

Four months into this mess and Poe doesn’t know where he stands anymore.

There’s been an assassination attempt on Finn and Poe wasn’t even there. He was flying some totally mundane mission with Han, working for an NGO that specialises in helping the refugees of the forest with seeds and spent the week carrying sacks of grain.

When he comes back Rey’s the one to wait for them and tells them, right there on the red earth between the tarmac and the hangar. There were two men, she says, in FARDC combat fatigues. Finn would have taken them both easily if he’d had a gun but he’s sworn off the gun these days.

The idea that one could willingly let go of their weapons appears to make Rey deeply uncomfortable, even spiteful. Poe knows there’s someone from the Episcopalian church visiting her sometimes and he can’t help pitying the guy. But then Rey goes on, explains that only one of them had a gun and that his aim was poor anyway and that _she_ would never lay off her knife. Her knife, Poe knows, is a jungle machete that still sends shivers up his spine and is nearly as long as her arm.

“So,” she concludes, “I disposed of the guys.”

“And Finn,” Poe rasps. “Finn. Is he okay?” It had to happen, he thinks. Finn talked on TV. Finn stands out, a poster boy for the reinsertion program. Finn is friend with Dr Mukwege and with an Occidental journalist or two. So many targets on his back. Poe wants out. He wants them both out if it’s not too late.

“Oh, sure,” she says, serene as a Madonna, “not a scratch. Finn knows how to lie down when he hears gunfire.”

Poe can’t help it, he gathers her in his arms and _squeezes._ “You saved him, Rey,” he can’t stop repeating. “You fucking saved him.”

“That makes two of us,” says Rey when he finally lets go of her. Her smile is blinding.

“Go find your man,” says Han. “I’ll take care of the planes.”

“Not my man,” mumbles Poe, but he’s already going.

/

Finn hasn’t got a scratch on him but the attempt shook him deep. He’s sitting on his bed and he’s literally shaking, one day after the fact. He doesn’t let go when Poe hugs him, holds fiercely and talks with his face in Poe’s neck.

“It’s not that I could die,” he says, his voice scratchier and lower than usual. “I – I know I will, I’m twenty-three, or so Phasma said, maybe twenty-four now, and it’s fucking old age for a child soldier. But these guys, Poe, these guys who tried to kill me, they were two of the FN boys. Zeroes, he was FN-2000, and Nines, who I told you about during our flight when you asked me to talk to you, don’t know if you remember.”

“I remember,” says Poe, pulling Finn even closer. “I remember everything you told me. I held onto your voice, that night. That’s only when you stopped talking and I began the landing routine that I can’t seem to know what happened. Nines was the one who often napped under the trucks, you were afraid you’d killed him.”

“They were my friends,” Finn sniffles. “The closest I had except for Slip. I was fantasising about going back to the camp and getting them out, and _they_ went out and tried to kill me.”

“I’m sorry,” says Poe, drawing small circles on Finn’s back with his hand. “So, so sorry. You’ve got us now. Rey, Leia and Han and I. Denis Mukwege, and I’ll be jealous ‘til the end of my life that he befriended you like that. Maz and the people at Takodana. Karé, Iolo, all the other pilots. Hell, that Grand Reporter from the French TV, Marie-Claude, you’re her favourite now. We’ve got your back, Finn. We love you.”

“Yes,” mumbles Finn, “But it’s been only months. The FN boys had been all my life for so long.”

But he still lets Poe hold him close and whisper soothing nothings in his ear until he abruptly gets limp on Poe’s shoulder, fast asleep.

/

The assassination attempt gets things moving in two ways.

First, Poe really begins to consider how to move away from here. He’s got two options, one being settling in France and becoming a paid journalist for La Résistance. Times are not so great for the printed press but La Résistance is holding its own and making a good job of branching to the Web and Leia could use him. The other is going back to California and finding some job there either as a consultant or a pilot. He looks into visas and travels, muses on universities and courses that could interest Finn and discovers how complicated it is for a Congolese man without even an official ID to even try to immigrate anywhere. He doesn’t tell anyone.

Second, he realises he can’t seem to hold a grudge against Rey anymore. She saved Finn’s life, she seems to think it puts her _and Poe_ in some kind of private club. She smiles to him.

She comes more often to the hangar but it’s not to tinker with BB-8 anymore, it’s to talk with Poe. To his surprise, he finds that he loves that. Her favourite subject isn’t Finn, it’s soon clear that it’s Leia. Leia says there are places when you don’t carry weapons openly in the street, Leia says I should learn more than just reading and writing, Leia talks of taking me to Paris next time, Leia says, Leia once did, Leia does, Leia’s so extraordinary.

It would amuse Poe so very much if he hadn’t had that exact same fixation on Leia, maybe earlier than Rey when he was around fifteen and his mother had died, but come to think of it it was still going full throttle at Rey’s age. He tells her and they both laugh.

“You know,” she tells him one day as they’re sitting on the slope near the hangar and drinking beers, “I don’t want to stay here.”

“Really? But the piloting lessons are going so well! You know, Han doesn’t trust the Falcon with just anyone.”

“I hid in the forest for so long and resisted everyone who wanted to take me to the city because my mother told me to wait there, or so I thought. But now that I realise that mothers, well, mothers don’t leave their children for so long if, if they can come back, I. I can’t stay here. Leia says there are places, like in Europe, where they don’t rape women like they do here, where you don’t have to be always careful. Where people don’t die all the time, uh.”

“That’s true,” says Poe, “although you’ll probably miss it here when you leave. Life’s very different in Europe. But it sure is much more peaceful and easy.”

“Leia says if I catch up fast enough on my maths I could study engineering in Paris. She’s got a brother there, Luke, she says I could stay with him when she’s not there. I’d love to. She says the easiest way is she and Han adopting me.”

The last she says with such intensity Poe can but know it’s not just about getting a passport or a visa. Rey wants it, wants it with all her soul, and he’s willing to bet Leia harbours more than just a bit of motherly feelings towards the girl. And Han must not be too far behind.

“It’s great,” says Poe, “do it.”

“I told her I thought they should adopt Finn, too,” she adds.

Poe chokes on his drink.

“Uh, really?” he manages.

“She said of course.”

It’s when Rey does things like that that Poe realises she’s so, so young and so naive in certain ways.

“And Finn?”

“We didn’t tell Finn yet, but I’m sure he’ll love that. He’s very fond of Han, you know. And of Leia, too, of course.”

“But, Rey, wouldn’t it feel awkward if you and Finn – well, if you and Finn became sort of siblings? Even if only in an administrative way?”

“Oh. You think it wouldn’t work? Because he’s black? It’s not done, in Europe, adopting black and white children together?”

“You aren’t children!”

“Yeah, you know what I mean.”

“Rey, it’s not the skin colour, it’s. It’s, oh, the fuck with it, aren’t you in love, the both of you?”

Rey looks at him curiously. “Well,” she says. “Of course I love him. He’s so much like me. Each time we talk about something we find we think the same. Except about weapons, of course. You know,” she adds, standing up and crossing her arms defiantly. “We’re already so close I always think of him as my brother. Even if you think that’s not done.”

“Oh my God,” says Poe, and his heart beats so fast at once that he feels dizzy and has to dig his nails in the earth to remain sitting up. “Oh. But. I meant, I meant romantically, you know. You don’t marry your sibling, even if they’re adopted like you. I thought – doesn’t Finn, at least, doesn’t Finn love you a little bit like that?”

He catches Rey’s minute shiver, then she smiles a little. “Oh no, she says, not at all, I don’t think. As for Finn I don’t think so, I mean. He’s not – I mean, he’s like you, I think?”

Poe’s heart beats even faster. “You mean gay?”

“What’s gay?”

“Homosexual, someone who likes persons of their own gender.”

“What’s gender?”

Dammit. “Man, woman, everything inbetween. Gay’s a man who likes other men, for example. Like me.”

“Yes,” says Rey. “Yes, exactly. That is, we didn’t quite talk about it together, but, ah. Well, you’re much more obvious about it than he is, but you sort of look at each other the same way, uh. When the other’s not looking.”

“Oh my God.”

“You’re okay, Poe?”

“My God.”

“Poe. Poe?”

“Uh?”

“It might be more easy here, I mean among the expats, but -”

“But what?”

“In the forest, the Minister, he said it was an abomination. And the others said people like that, men who take men, for pleasure, they’re sorcerers. I saw one. Saw one, they clubbed him nearly to death.”

Poe takes his head in his hands. “ ‘m not a sorcerer.”

“Of course. Neither is Finn.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know. I know about that. It’s the other thing that made me, shit, _makes_ me scared of making a move on him, uh. I’m scared for him. Don’t want to paint another target on his back. Might actually be better if he gets out of here. Can’t you convince him to go studying in Paris with you, if Leia adopts him too?”

She scoots closer to him, not quite touching, Rey doesn’t like to touch people. But close, nonetheless, and she feels strangely comforting.

“Have you never thought,” she asks, “that Finn might be scared for you, too?”

/

Next time Finn comes to ask Poe what he’s doing, Poe gets them both on the bike and drives to the lakeshore a few miles away from the city. Far enough that they can talk without fear of being heard, lost enough that there probably won’t be any drunken soldiers looking around for loot, close enough that they’ll get found if anything goes wrong. You never know.

They take their usual dip in the water, swimming, splashing and horsing around. And now that Poe pays attention the right way he sees it. The way Finn’s always going for the game that will allow maximum skin contact. The way his breath catches just minutely when Poe gets a good grip on his biceps, their chest nearly touching. How his fingers trail along Poe’s curls just a tad too long when Finn tries to duck him in. How they just graze the hairs on his chest before his hands settle firmly there as he catches Poe from behind and lifts him up.

How he suddenly pulls his hips back, smiles sheepishly and says his back is seizing up and he’s going for a quiet swim to try to make it better.

Poe smirks inwardly and refrains to torture him further by offering a massage. For sure, Finn might not be the only one needing a quiet time in cold water to cool things down right now.

They towel themselves dry and Poe notices Finn stealing glances. Well, Poe’s doing the same, and he can’t get enough of Finn’s body. Even after a season of city life, the guy’s still got _muscles_ , dammit, long strong muscles and a flat stomach and the dreamiest ass there ever was. All that cycling he does to circulate around town, Poe guesses. That and youth and good genes.

And then there’s Finn’s skin. Dark brown and deliciously smooth until it’s not, which is something Poe doesn’t know how he feels about. You follow the line of his neck to his spine and then the skin is marred by the worst burn scar Poe’s ever seen, a slash across his back more than one foot long. There are other burn marks on his arms and legs, thin dark linear old scars on his ribs and four puckered round ones on a thigh that were certainly bullet wounds. This is who Finn is, this man of twenty-three with the scarred body of a veteran of several wars. It’s scary and heartbreaking and also such a large part of who Finn is today.

They get clothed and sit side by side on the shore. Now Poe notices the slight tremor in Finn’s hand as he moves it so close to Poe’s, now he sees how Finn’s eyes settle on his mouth when Poe bites his lips.

Well, you can’t know until you’ve asked.

“Do you like men?” Poe asks. “Romantically?” he adds because after the experience of talking to Rey he’s learned it never pays to keep things vague.

Finn sucks in a shuddering breath and swivels his head at once, looking into Poe’s eyes. He licks his lips.

“I do.”

There’s a second question Poe should ask but it’s even harder than the first. The rush of adrenaline mixed with desire is like nothing he had before.

“Liking men around here, it can be scary,” he says, which isn’t at all what he’d planned. “Dangerous. When not in the Occidentals quarter.”

“It’s dangerous even in the Occidentals quarter,” says Finn as he lays his hand over Poe’s.

“Perhaps. I never minded. I’m willing to take the risk.”

“I am, too.”

“Can I kiss you?” Poe finally finds the courage to ask.

Finn closes the gap between their bodies, his leg flush against Poe’s, sets one hand on the back of Poe’s neck, the other on his side, twists and fuses their lips together.

As far as techniques go, it’s not a kiss for the ages. At first they don’t even go further than this, lips and noses squashed hard, breathing each other's breath, pulling each other in as strong as they can. Maybe they’re too stunned that they took the plunge to do more, maybe they just need this, just the feeling of each other’s body, the thrum of their pulses in their ears and the heave of their chests.

Then Finn moans and opens his mouth. Poe grunts and tilts his head to a better angle, opens in answer, tries a bit of tongue. Afterwards there’s no possible control. There are teeth on his lips and Finn’s tongue hot against his, it’s sloppy and messy and too wet by far, teeth clicking and tongues probing again and he opens wider and he just doesn’t want it to stop.

Finn’s hand leaves his side to go on his stomach, lying flat under his tee at first and then pushing up, bunching the shirt under his arms and finding his pecs, kneading and probing until they find a nipple and Poe keens, high and needy into Fin’s mouth.

He exhales, pushes Finn away.

“What,” says Finn, eyes wide and pupils blown. “What?”

“I’m all for taking risks,” says Poe, his voice rough with need, “but not unnecessary ones. My room? We can lock the door and close the blinds.”

“Yes,” says Finn, already running towards the bike.

/

When they dismount in front of the villa there’s nothing more that Poe would like than touching Finn, taking his hand or his waist and pull him close. He’s already done things like that with some others, threw a careless arm over a shoulder, even kissed in the street a few times. But they were men like him, expats, here one day and gone the next. He can’t do this to Finn, he can’t risk expose him, so he walks one step in front and tries not to explode with repressed desire.

As soon as the blinds are shut they both try to push each other against the door and end half-laughing, half-wrestling and kissing on the floor. It lasts until Poe gets the higher hand and pins Finn between his arms, lungs for his neck and sucks there, licks up the column of his throat, kisses along his jaw and ends mouthing his earlobe. Finn likes that. Finn really _likes_ that and makes it known, but that doesn’t refrain him from getting an arm out, grabbing Poe’s hair and pulling, _pulling hard_ oh fuck and that’s one thing Poe can’t resist, until Finn gets them side by side and resumes kissing his mouth with even more passion.

Poe’s again the one to pull out and Finn looks murderous.

“The bed,” Poe manages to say. “More comfortable. Also, gotta lock the door.”

The few feet between them are enough for Poe to find a bit of self-control and also the box of condoms and the tube of lube in the entry drawer.

He goes to sit side by side with Finn on the bed. They’re both breathing hard and he can see the pulse flutter fast in the artery of Finn’s neck.

“You ever done this before?” he asks.

“Only with willing partners,” says Finn, and yes, that’s good to know and horrible that Finn feels it needs saying. Fucking hell of a place. “Did it a few times, most often with Slip, once even with a woman.”

“Really?” says Poe, curious. “How was it?”

“Huh. Well. ‘t was wet. She lacked a dick. She was skilled, though. It was Phasma.”

“Shit, Finn, with _Phasma_? And that’s all you find to say? I mean, I love men, I really do, but even so I could make an exception for her, well in an ideal world where she wouldn’t want to kill me. She’s magnificent! Or didn’t you want – ”

“Oh no, I wanted it very much! I was curious. But really, Poe, it was – she is – not very interested in others. And scary.” 

“And with men? How do you like it?” Poe asks, passing his hand slowly up and down Finn’s thigh, closer and closer to the interesting bulge in his pants. “Like to top?” He’s betting Finn does.

“Top?” asks Finn, and fuck but the language barrier can really insert itself in the most unwanted places.

“I prefer being on the receiving end,” says Poe, “Though I like both so no pressure, you really have a magnificent ass. You?”

“Oh, _top_. Sure, I prefer that. Topping. Also I like to, you know, with my mouth, too,” he says, making quite an obscene gesture to make himself understood. Poe feels himself blush hard, my God, the idea of Finn going down on him, he’s going to die even before they’ve done anything.

“ ‘s called giving head,” he says in a strangled voice. “Or a blowjob.”

“And how do you say being on the receiving end?” Finn sets his hand on Poe’s back and goes decidedly down, past the hem of his cargo pants until he cups his ass and slips a probing finger in his crack.

“Mmmh, Finn, you’re gonna kill me with the language questions” breathes Poe. “Mmmh, fuck, do that again. Bottoming. That’s called bottoming. I fucking love bottoming like you have no idea.”

Finn has pushed Poe further on the bed and is fondling his ass with both hands while nuzzling his neck. “Mmh,” he says. “I guess I get the idea now.”

“One last thing before you render me incoherent,” says Poe, shaking the condom box in one hand while going on at Finn’s thighs with the other. “Condoms. I don’t do –” he’s about to say bareback but realises he won’t survive another language lesson, so settles for “I don’t do anything without one. Ever used any?”

“Only once. Phasma,” says Finn in a voice that’s become raspy with desire.

“Okay. Sorry to ask, but do you know your HIV status? I got checked two months ago myself, everything was good.”

“Got a checkup at the hospital when we arrived. I’m negative.”

“Thank God,” says Poe, fervently, realising he was holding his breath. “Still, condoms, uh. At least for a while.” He smiles. “I can help you putting it on in creative ways, if you wish.”

“Yeah,” says Finn, low. “Yeah, I’d love that. Now, come up and kiss me again?”

They kiss, sitting in the middle of the bed with Poe on Finn’s lap and their erections brushing together through their clothes. Finn moans and rolls his hips and Poe answers to the pressure, putting his hand on the small of Finn’s back and rutting against him. “Fuck,” he moans, “Fuck, too many clothes.”

He gets Finn’s shirt out of the way first, and if it tore a little maybe it’s because it was an old thin thing Finn stole in his closet, or maybe because he was a bit hasty. Finn’s trying to undo both their flies at once until Poe bats his hands away, throws off his tee somewhere and takes off his own pants and underwear, then does the same for Finn. Finn’s cock juts out, rock hard and long and flushed so dark and beautiful, curving a little to the left, uncut and the head already beading with moisture. Poe can’t help touching, just touching the hot velvety skin and closing his hand and Finn groans and closes his eyes and fucks Poe’s hand just once, his head thrown back and eyes half closed. It takes so much will not to just close his hand again and jack him to completion because he’s so, so beautiful like that.

“Right,” says Poe. “Condom. And then I’d very much like your fingers in me and I know it’s considered better to have some kind of preliminaries before but you’re so hot, Finn, you’re so hot and I want you so much I won’t last. Now you look. It’s called going down.”

Poe pushes Finn back on the bed and begins kissing his neck, then his chest. His nipples don’t seem so sensitive but it’s obvious Finn likes to be touched so Poe adds his hands to his mouth and keeps going down until he reaches the lower part of his stomach and Finn’s shivering and moaning and doing small involuntary jerks with his hips.

“Shit, Poe!” he rasps. “Told you I wanted to do that part to you!”

“Yeah but I’d have come right away. Next time? This here’s just for the condom,” he says, smirking on Finn’s skin and looking up between his lashes.

He cracks the condom open and positions it on Finn’s dick, then unrolls it down with his mouth. The guttural, throaty sound it elicits from Finn goes straight to his own groin. “Feels good?” he asks, mouth still against Finn’s cock, breathing on his balls.

“Nnnngh – yeah, yeah, feels great, you’re so beautiful, Poe, want you, want you so much.”

So Finn talks, even a little. “Want you too,” says Poe, sitting up. “Help me put on my own condom?” He shows Finn how, and Finn’s hands are warm and slightly shaky over his as they roll it down and fuck but he’s so hard it’s beginning to ache.

He throws himself face down on the bed, legs slightly apart, turns his head to look at Finn over his shoulder. He knows his ass isn’t so bad either, knows how to twist his back and shoulders to make the muscles pop out, but right now he doesn’t care, right now Finn can watch and think what he wants, he just wants his fingers and his cock and he wants to get filled and he wants Finn’s mouth on his neck and Finn’s hands holding him while he pounds in. “Take me,” he says, “anyway you want, lube’s there on the bed, come on.”

Finn gets two slick fingers in him at once and God they’re thick and it even hurts a little but it’s a good kind of hurt. Either the man is more experienced than Poe had thought or he’s a natural, he’s probably a natural because Finn’s just good like that, and Finn’s curving and twisting his fingers inside and finds his prostate and God, God it’s so good but he wants more. Finn’s draped on his back, breath hot in his ear, on his neck, on his shoulder and he kisses there, kisses with just a hint of teeth and Poe moans, long and keening and loud, just when Finn adds a third finger, scissoring and twisting again until Poe feels himself opening around him, all loose and slick and ready.

“Go in,” he rasps, “with your cock, now, please, Finn, go in, I need you in me, please.”

Finn doesn’t wait to hear it twice and grabs Poe’s hips with both hands, pulls his ass up and gets his knees under, enters him, just the head of his cock and then he stays like that, breathing hard, one hand setting on Poe’s ass and kneading reflexively, then going to the distended, sensitive skin around his hole and fuck but Poe can’t stand it, the way all the nerves of his body are singing like that and how his hole is clenching around Finn and how he wants, how he needs to be filled now, more of Finn inside him, “more, more, come on, more,” he begs.

“Don’t know,” Finn moans, “don’t know if I’ll hold, ah, Poe –”

“Don’t care, come inside me, fill me, Finn, please,” he begs again and pushes back with his whole upper body and gets Finn in. Finn follows and buries himself deep in one long stroke and Poe loves it so, the tightness and the way that spreads him open, so wide. “You feel good, so good inside,” he moans, and then Finn moves, a tiny bit but it hits his prostate and Poe _yells_.

Finn leans on Poe’s back and his flattens his hand on Poe’s mouth at once. “You’re too noisy,” he says, voice wavering, “careful, Poe, they’ll hear us, please.”

Poe takes Finn’s hand, gets it off, gently, sucks a finger. “It’s all right, love, it’s all right, nobody cares here, or if they do they’ll be happy for us, noise is good, we’re good.”

He sucks on Finn’s fingers again and Finn, still moulded over Poe’s back half groans, half moans in his ear. “Okay,” Finn manages between kisses, “Okay, then shout for me, Poe, I love your noises, love how you talk, tell me –” his angle is not great like that but Finn _is_ flexible and he cants his hips, jerks up hard and buries himself even deeper. Poe’s never heard the sound that comes out of his own mouth before.

“Fuck I like that,” whispers Finn and Poe can hear the smile in his voice. “Want more?”

Poe groans because Finn’s risen up and nearly pulled out. “You bet,” he says, trying to push back, “do it, Finn, do it, fuck me hard!”

And Finn does, long, deep strokes at first, listening to Poe’s keening and moans and grunts and adjusting each time, angle and strength and depth and Poe feels Finn is playing him like an instrument and that’s so fucking hot, and he can’t, won’t last, gets his hand on his own dick and begins pumping. Finn gets wild at the sight, heightening his pace, finally losing his control and his grunts become full-throated shouts, finally, finally, thinks Poe and he comes first like he hasn’t for a long time, comes and clenches his ass and Finn follows, yelling and collapsing on him.

“You need to pull out now,” Poe still has the presence of mind to say, panting. “With a condom, you need to withdraw at once holding the condom on.”

/

Finn’s a cuddler, to Poe’s surprise and delight. He buries into Poe’s side and nests his head on his shoulder and Poe holds him there, tight and secure and loved.

“I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” whispers Finn.

“Have you?”

“Since the first day.” Finn chuckles with embarrassment or self-consciousness. He goes on, nonetheless. “When we caught you at the trucks, you were sweating. It made your hair curl at the temples even more, here, uh, just like now.”

Finn catches some of Poe’s hair with a finger, curls it around and kisses his temple. “And your shirt clung to your chest and I thought, shit, he’s gorgeous. Then you stood up to Ren, even a little to Phasma, and afterwards you smiled. Half of your face was swollen and you were bleeding and I still thought your lips were beautiful. I wanted to kiss them.”

“That’s when I fell in love with you,” Poe hears himself say. “Me standing in the rain and you guarding me, I thought I was about to die and I just fell in love.”

Finn doesn’t jump or gasp at the revelation but his eyes open and he looks up at Poe. He knows, thinks Poe, he already knew. But since the cat is out of the bag he wants to make it absolutely unequivocal. “And I never stopped,” he says. “Never stopped loving you.”

“I don’t know when I fell in love,” answers Finn, his voice far away. “It came bit by bit, I think. Each day more. I’ll probably go on finding new reasons to love you for a long time.”

/

Love stories always begin like that, Poe tries to think. They always feel like there was nothing so strong or true before, there’s always passion, there’s always the need to think and talk about the other all the time, there’s always the certainty that it will never stop.

He makes himself think of the two, maybe three serious relationships he’s had before, how they began, how they ended. His mind wants him to calm down, his heart tells him otherwise. His heart tells him that Finn fills a longing inside he didn’t even know he had, that Finn is everything he could have dreamed of and still manages to surprise him with more, that they look good together, that they _do_ good together. That he loves him and wants to love him forever.

And finally his mind agree and he tells himself he’ll _work_ at loving Finn forever.

Finn ends up almost living in his flat. It’s not official since he keeps his room at Takodana, it _can’t_ be official. But Finn’s toothbrush and razor take their quarters in Poe’s shower and as Finn has always counted on Poe for his clothes nothing changes on that side. It’s just easier for him to dig in Poe’s closet.

Poe realises he never, absolutely never had a relationship like that. On the inside, it takes all his mind, all his heart, all his time. On the outside, they hide, so much and so obsessively that it becomes the object of their first major row. Poe’s been visiting Finn at Takodana, maybe smiling a lot, maybe even taking Finn’s hand once, but he’s done it so often before, and suddenly Finn stands up and rushes away and Poe doesn’t even dare to go after him until Maz signals him to do so.

When they’re finally alone and secure at Poe’s Finn bursts out, accusing Poe of smiling too much, of being too obvious, of putting them in danger. Poe lashes back hard, words violent and maybe a little cruel, and tells him he’s always been like that, that he can’t change himself, that he’s human, that it’s Finn who’s cold and like a machine, until Finn flinches and crumbles and cries and says that he couldn’t stand it if Poe were caught.

“There’s no law against us in RDC,” says Poe softly, all anger gone and feeling so guilty.

But Finn guffaws, no mirth in it. “What’s law,” he only says, “here.”

So Poe gathers him in the circle of his arms and kisses him and maybe he cries, too.

“I’m not cold,” says Finn. “I’m always burning inside and it always feels like it’s going to burst out. I love you, Poe. Always.”

/

Poe can’t live like that for long, he knows he’s going mad. He knows he’s got to do something.

He talks to Leia. They make plans together, about Finn, about immigration and studying and adoption. He begins to think of jobs in Europe, things he could do there if La Résistance can’t keep him, he looks into long-term visas and tries himself at motivation letters and CVs.

And then Finn finds it all.

It happens one afternoon, just after they’ve made love. The damp heat is at its worst and Finn loses their game of rock paper scissors so that he has to get up and try to coerce the fan into moving. As usual, he climbs on Poe’s desk to do so and the papers Poe had collected in an unsteady pile fall down.

Finn gathers them and can’t help reading. He stops dead.

“You’re leaving,” he says, his voice absolutely blank.

Poe jumps up at once, rushes to Finn and tries to hold him. But Finn takes one step back.

“These are CVs,” he says in a strangled voice. “CVs, motivation letters, plans. All about France and Europe.”

“No,” says Poe, “wait, no –”

“How?”

Finn blinks, several times.

“Please, Finn,” says Poe, touching Finn’s cheek. Finn catches his arm but doesn’t let go. “It’s true. I’m thinking of leaving, but –”

Finn’s begun to shake his head and then he can’t seem to even look at Poe anymore.

“But, Finn, that’s with you I want to leave. Please. This life here, always hiding, it’s too hard. It’s going to break us, or kill us. I’m beginning to dream horrible dreams where I find you dead in a ditch or worse and I can’t, I just can’t – there are other places, you know. Where we could hold hands in public, even kiss, and the worse we might get, not often, would be a few slurs. There are countries where we could even marry, for fuck’s sake!”

It gets an unbelieving chuckle out of Finn. “Really? They’d marry two men together?”

“Sure. Finn, leave with me. Let’s make ourselves a life some place where there are laws, and good ones, and no Kalashnikovs in the streets.”

“In Europe? Where Rey wants to go?”

“Yeah, why not. I can probably work as a journalist in France, that’s where Leia is from.”

“How would they see me, these white people? A black man with a white man?”

“Wouldn’t be always easy, sure. There’s racism. But not always nor everywhere. We could make it work.”

Finn remains silent for a while, standing up with Poe’s papers in his hand, forgotten. Then he sighs, sets the papers on the desk and goes back to sit on the bed, motioning for Poe to come by.

That’s him, for once, who pulls Poe close and cradles him in his arms.

“Poe, my love,” he says. “I don’t want to go. I’m – I’d love it, kissing you in public. I’d even love marrying you if I weren’t so sure you’re pulling my leg. But here, it’s my land. Yes, there’s no law, except the kind you make with a gun, and we’re poor and most of the time we live in terror. But you’re the one who brought me here in Bukavu, who introduced me to all these incredible people, you know how they are, Poe, you know everything they’re trying to build, hell, you’re even helping them. I’m sure there’s no Dr Mukwege in France, because there can be only one of him and he lives _here_.”

Finn rubs at his eyes and looks down at his wet hands.

“That’s my dream. I want to see this land, my land, without the Kalashnikovs and the rapes and the fear. I want to help build that, however I can. However long it takes. I know white people, even the best ones like you, they don’t stay forever. They weren’t born there, they end resenting the place and even when they don’t they’re never quite accepted in. I know that. So, my love. If you can’t stand it –” Finn’s voice breaks and there’s a sob and Poe realises he’s nodding to what Finn says and crying, too.

“If you can’t stand it, leave, before you become bitter or before it kills you. I’ll miss you like hell, like my own hands and my own heart but I can’t make you stay just for me. But I, I’m going to stay.”

Poe lets his head slump on his knees with his hands over it and remains prostrated, letting big, ugly tears come out. There’s so much he has to grieve for right now, simple dreams like kissing Finn in a crowded street or taking him to a sentimental, crappy movie to make out in the dark, or big, faraway dreams like buying a house together or yes, marrying.

Then he looks up. “I won’t leave without you,” he says, surprised that his voice sounds so strong. “So if you think your life is here, then I won’t leave at all. If you still want this white man who does, in a way, love this place but will never quite fit in and might try to hold your hand discretely when he thinks he can get away with it. If you want me here, for as long as you wish.”

Finn laughs, then cries again, and then crushes Poe’s lips on his own.

“I want you here forever,” he says. “Forever.”

/

Poe goes to visit Maz and she sees he needs to talk, takes him to where they can, privately.

“Maz,” he says, “I’ve come to ask you how it feels, being an outsider who takes root here for the love of a guy.”

“So you’ve figured things out,” says Maz. “But I thought that when you did, you’d snatch Finn off our hands.”

“He doesn’t want to leave. He says his place is here, to rebuild things.”

“So you’re staying. Isn’t that going to be hard? I’ve seen you the other day. Nobody can hide that much for that long.”

“We’ll be doing some adjustments, I just hope it will be enough. Finn’s getting his own apartment in the villa, close to mine. No more coming and going between there and Takodana, and he won’t appear to live with me either. His pay at the hospital will be enough, although it’s going to be close. And Leia will help, too. Not with the rent, but with some other things. Rey will be in Paris and Leia might arrange for us to visit, short vacations and the like.”

“And you have to convince him to study, Poe. Really. He needs to understand that in order to be useful here he has to leave for a while, to learn. To Kinshasa, if he doesn’t want to leave the country. Or abroad. You’ll get some good time together, I promise, my boy.”

“Yeah. I hope.”

“And to answer your question. It’s hard, being and outsider. They’ll always think you are with the other faction, they’ll always leave you behind – no, not Finn, but the others. And it’s going to be even harder for you. My god, a white man, with another man. You’re setting the bar very, very high, the both of you, you know that?”

“Fucking hell, Maz, of course I know. It scares me, that’s why I went to you.”

“But you’ll do it, anyway, won’t you? You’ll make it work. I trust Finn to do great things, and I trust you to follow and help him. Isn’t that silly? Two people fall in love, and suddenly I feel full of hope. Maybe you’ll see the last of the chaos here, you and Finn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit : forgot! I'm on tumblr [la-tarasque](http://la-tarasque.tumblr.com/). Updating when I can, not very good with gifs, making art sometimes, often can't shut off my brain.
> 
> And that’s done. What began as a challenge I gave myself to write a Stormpilot TFA AU that would keep the original tension between Finn and Poe’s situations ended – well, ended in me writing my guts out about a situation that is so, so very real. And tragic, and ongoing, and forgotten.  
> So I hope you read, and I hope you liked. I also tried my best at writing the love story and found myself loving them even more in that setting. Also, I ended pouring all the romantic side I don’t have in real life in the ending. I hope it went through.  
> \---  
> I had already some knowledge about the situation, not first hand. I did use some sources to try to stick to the facts and hope that I didn’t make major mistakes.  
> The Lor San Tekka part is inspired by what happened to two friends of mine who passed through Kenya on a motorbike tour of Africa. They met a man from a phone manufacturing company who cried on their shoulders for the whole evening because of the atrocities he had witnessed. There were no scoops and he didn’t die, though.  
> Dr Denis Mukwege is real and is a real hero. He heals women, promotes awareness, still lives in Bukavu in spite of I think 5 assassination attempts. You can look him up on google. He really manages the [Panzi hospital](http://www.panzihospital.org/) in Bukavu and you can donate if you wish, [here.](http://www.panzihospital.org/about/support-panzi-hospital)  
> A lot of the secondary characters and stories are inspired by parts of [Titouan Lamazou’s](http://www.titouanlamazou.com/) book [Ténèbres en Paradis](http://www.amazon.fr/T%C3%A9n%C3%A8bres-Paradis-Africaines-Grands-Lacs/dp/2742430970). I’ve never seen a book so gorgeous (Lamazou made portraits of women from the Great Lakes region, painted, photographic and written) and so tragic. There are also short explanations about the economic and geopolitical situation (in 2011 but it’s not really changed since then). It’s chilling. If you read in French you might like to take a look.  
> Titouan Lamazou gets a cameo in this fic, maybe you spotted him.  
> There’s really a need for bush plane traffic in that part of Africa. There are NGOs specialising in it. But I’m not sure a character like Poe could really exist, or if he could he’d be really exceptional. Not sure either that there are local women pilots. Well, we need our heroes, and what I did here is exactly what the French TV team tried to do, writing human interest and an external point of view we could identify to into a tragedy.  
> \---  
> As for the languages. The few words in an African language are in Swahili, which is the lingua franca around the African Lakes. My thanks to Google translate.  
> Kuacha = stop (I hope)  
> French is the official language in Congo, the RDC being a former Belgian colony. It’s also my native language which might explain why there’s so much about France in there. RDC means République Démocratique du Congo. FARDC are the Forces Armées de la RDC, the regular troops.  
> I would have loved to get the cadences and expressions of African-spoken French or English but I already struggle with dialogues in English at the best of times, so you’ll just have to imagine it.


	5. Adding fanart to the story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realised I never added this piece of fanart I made for the story. Definitely not Titouan Lamazou-level although I tried for this kind of style, but I hope you enjoy!


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